A mettle-proving 6A girls basketball postseason awaits for Grants Pass, Brooke Anderson

By Shane Hoffmann 

Credit to Scott Wakefield — he had a hunch.

After then-freshman Brooke Anderson turned in a solid season on the soccer pitch, the Grants Pass girls basketball coach believed adamantly that success on the hardwood wouldn’t be far behind.

“Brooke will make an immediate impact,” he said then.

The team was coming off an 11-13 finish — a rare down year amidst a string of winning seasons.

Anderson, a short (now 5-foot-6) yet swift and heady guard, inherited the reins at the point guard spot. She averaged 18 points per game her freshman year and guided her team back to an above-.500 record at 8-5. As a sophomore, she bumped it up to 19 points per game and the Lady Cavers to a 14-10 finish. She earned first-team all-conference honors both years.

“A town like Grants Pass, we don't get the stud transfer that just walks through the door,” Wakefield said. 

But when a local, burgeoning talent does walk through, Wakefield, now in his 14th year at the helm, can quickly sniff it out.

Consider his foresight validated. 

This season, Grants Pass (13-5, 5-3 Southwest Conference) is fighting for playoff seeding in what’s suddenly become a top-heavy Southwest Conference — and an even more elite 6A class. 

“Down here in Grants Pass, it seems like anytime we're good, everybody else is good to go,” Wakefield joked.

The Lady Cavers sit in third place in their conference and No. 9 overall in the most recent OSAA rankings. With a string of marquee road games ahead — Jesuit, South Medford and Sheldon — they could catapult even higher.

Anderson is off and running again. And despite a slight dip in her scoring as she’s continued to become a known commodity, her teammates are helping pick up the slack. 

While the Lady Cavers’ recent success might well be a product of her teammates loosening the offensive load with breakthrough performances of their own, if Grants Pass is to capitalize on the upcoming stretch, it likely will fall squarely on the lead guard and her ability to go head-to-head with some of the state’s best.

Anderson is acutely aware of her team’s situation, of their challenging route toward the right to host a playoff game. In a conference filled with big names, highlighted by South Medford’s Donovyn Hunter, Anderson is honest about her standing as her team’s star, too.

For as great a role she’s carved out for herself in Southern Oregon, when she glances around at the state’s top talents, she still doesn’t view them as her peers — rather, as something to aspire to. 

“I want to get up there someday,” she said. “I want people to look up to me as well.”

But for as pragmatically she views her team and her role within it, there’s almost a naivety when she speaks about her shortcomings. She’ll repeatedly cite confidence as a building point and something she’s felt has been, at times, lacking.

Wakefield, though? He’s seen no such issues on that front for his lead guard.

As a freshman, in Anderson’s first matchup with South Medford, she drew senior Emma Schmerbach as her defender. Through the first half, Schmerbach shut down the supposedly wide-eyed freshman, holding her scoreless.

“We had that conversation (at halftime),” Wakefield said. “‘Hey, yeah, all right. Now you're playing with the big kids — let's go, get up. You've seen it now. Now figure it out.’”

In the second half, Anderson poured in 16 points against Schmerbach, now a collegiate hooper. 

“Whether it's freshman year or junior year, she takes those matchups real seriously and wants to put her best foot out there,” Wakefield said.

He added: “Her growth, development and competitive nature is up there with the best in the state. … If we were shooting paper wads at a garbage can, she would want to kick your butt.”

Anderson spent much of her underclassman years being face-guarded by defenders, the lack of other perimeter threats serving as much of the reasoning. 

Teams aren’t opting for that strategy nearly as much these days. Anderson’s game has evolved to the point where that’s hardly an effective way to guard her, and her teammates have emerged as threats of their own. Guards Sophie Mock and Kenzie Kleiner have helped alleviate some ball-handling duties, and Brooklyn Wakefield — second-team all-conference last season — along with Mia Thompson are giving the Lady Cavers more of an interior presence.

“We’re really getting it from multiple areas, and that's the fun part,” Scott Wakefield said. “It's not just one kid or two kids; it's multifaceted.”

Last season, Grants Pass possessed a strong junior class, but just one senior. Wakefield said he understandably found himself harping on basketball maturity, or lack thereof, too often. This season, that hasn’t been the case as several of his players — his daughters Brooklyn and Kennedy, and Anderson, chief among them — have been in the school’s youth programs for years. 

This season, they’ve even developed a true calling card. 

“If there was any team staple that we have, it's that we walk away and people compliment and go, ‘Man, your team just works really hard,’” Wakefield said. “And so, as a coach, that's a really good testament and feeling that you have — something that your kids are known for.”

Hard work might have gotten the Lady Cavers to this point — the precipice of what could be a make-or-break week for their postseason seeding — but this is the week where Wakefield and his Lady Cavers will turn toward their all-conference star. They’ll rely on her. 

And maybe Anderson doesn’t yet view herself as one of the state’s elite. That’s fine. A mettle-proving postseason, however, awaits.

“She's really the head that leads the body for Grants Pass,” Wakefield said.